Reinvention Girl
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day six hundred and six: Santana knows one day the truth will have to come out, but at what price?


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 28th cycle. Now cycle 29!_

**TOP 16, TAKE 2: **_Okay so a couple cycles back, I did my second 'top of Glee at the moment' cycle. Now since I was still in university and such at the time, those were planned a while back, before the second half of the season every started. This made it that by the time that cycle rolled around I realized that some things had changed... Things were added, removed, bumped up... Point is it didn't really reflect where I was anymore. So I decided 'what the heck, I'll do another one ASAP!' And so here we are :) This is my revised Top 16 (of course I HAD to plan before the finale, so there are still a couple things missing like Samcedes, Unholy Trinity, etc, but let's assume they're there ;) They'll get some love in coming cycles ;)) So off we go!  
><strong>Coming in at number three...<strong>_

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><p><strong>"Reinvention Girl"<br>Santana **

She distinctly remembered how one the questions had just started coming to her, without warning. She remembered how being at home, at school, would suddenly include this constant questioning of 'is this going to change me? Is this going to change us?' It had been part of things for a while now, but never as much as it became, as soon as she'd started admitting – if to herself and no one else – who she was. After that, things could never be the same, and everything became… the question game.

School was one thing. In that place, she wasn't just Santana, she was Santana Lopez, cheerleader, popular, and all around self-proclaimed bitch. People had their idea of her good and settled, and she should know, because she had been the one to create it and lay it on them. She was making no apologies, and if they didn't like it, well tough… She liked who she was, and the idea that it could get taken away was just not one she could ever care for in any way. No matter what anyone said, she knew none of them find a middle ground. They would just stick that new identity over what she used to be, and that would be gone… like someone gluing a new poster over an old one… and she had no control.

She did have those who knew her, the Glee Club, of course. Even there though, the people who knew the truth were an even smaller group, two… Brittany, and Dave Karofsky… She knew deep down that she could tell them everything, and they would be right there on her side, without a doubt, but she wasn't ready for that, ready for them. She was still trying to be ready for herself.

All of that was one thing, and there was the world in general, too, but as time went by, it became clear there was one place, one ensemble of people that worried her more than any other.

She walked around her house now, wondering, always wondering… Would there ever be a day when she could be honest with them? She imagined the way they would react, then the way they would… or wouldn't… adjust, and how it would all end up… It usually always boiled down to two versions, like the best possible outcome, and then… the other way…

She thought about her mother, and how, if this came off in the best outcome, she would just be… cautious. She could see her, wanting to make sure she was saying the right words, something like that. And Santana would love her for it, because she'd know it just meant she loved her, and respected her, and wanted to show that to her. It would be about facing the unknown, for the sake of her love for her. But what about the other way? What if she didn't see this revelation as something to accept but something to… condemn? She didn't say it enough to her, she felt, but her mother meant more to her than just nearly every other human being on this planet. And the idea that all of her past, her history, could get washed away by the truth… She didn't know her mother to be a hateful person, but people could surprise you when it came to certain subjects, and this would be one massive polarizer. Whatever she didn't know about her mother, she could be learning it right then, with this news. She didn't want to lose her, couldn't lose her… wouldn't run the risk… not if she had no idea…

Then there was her father. She wished she could have the kind of relationship with him that Kurt had with his father, but unlike her mother, it would take some more time to scare up a 'best outcome' scenario. He wasn't a bad guy, far from, but… she heard him speak, sometimes… and she wished she didn't, because it took away from him… It made him this other person with her father's face, and she didn't want that. She could think that he would find out about her, and he would just… he'd protect her. But what she feared would be the most likely outcome was that he would turn into this other side of himself, and that this hatred would get turned on to her, until it drove her right out of her home. For all her strengths, this could possibly be the thing to destroy her.

They allowed her that strength. She could be who she was out there because at home she could be someone else… It wasn't as though she suddenly turned into some all-over-the-place weirdo, but it didn't change the fact that she was a whole other person at school or at home. So what would happen to who she was, out of home, if home was compromised, if it wasn't a place of strength anymore?

But she couldn't lie to them forever. Because that was what it felt like; she was lying to them, and she hated it. If she couldn't be herself at home, then what was the point of it? This was supposed to be her place, to feel safe in, only lately all it did was show her all her wrongdoings as of late. There was fear, definitely, or she would have just gone ahead and told the truth as soon as there was truth to be told, something she hadn't shared with anyone, not one soul…

She wanted to tell them, and it had become something that occupied her mind, if it ever wandered off into a daydream state. When she wasn't thinking of ways to seduce Brittany away from Artie, she would try and imagine what it would be like to do it, to come out to her parents. She could see how much she wanted it from the ratio of dreams to nightmares. In her mind, the scenarios she came up with, more often than not, they were shown as being so very accepting of her, and only sometimes did they come off as banishing her away, ignoring who she was to them now…

She wasn't going to let this lead her life forever. The longer she kept the truth from her parents, the further the two spread away, like a V-shaped wake… The further they went apart, the harder it would be to draw them together again; they might never be able to be comfortable with bridging the gap.

THE END

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><p><strong>AN: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
><strong>**In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
><strong>******always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!******

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><p><strong><strong><strong>PS: I'm going to work to find a way to make a list available of the various series, I just need to find a way to make the link available, since this site seems to have an issue with putting links to stuff ;)<strong>****


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